In the medieval
Roman Catholic
The Catholic Church (), also known as the Roman Catholic Church, is the largest Christian church, with 1.27 to 1.41 billion baptized Catholics worldwide as of 2025. It is among the world's oldest and largest international institut ...
church there were several Councils of
Tours
Tours ( ; ) is the largest city in the region of Centre-Val de Loire, France. It is the Prefectures in France, prefecture of the Departments of France, department of Indre-et-Loire. The Communes of France, commune of Tours had 136,463 inhabita ...
, that city being an old seat of Christianity, and considered fairly centrally located in France.
Council of Tours 461
The Council was called by
Perpetuus, Bishop of Tours, to address the worldliness and profligacy of the Gallic clergy. Athenius,
Bishop of Rennes, took part in the First Council of Tours in AD 461. The last to sign the canons was Mansuetus, ''episcopus Brittanorum'' ("bishop of the Britons"
n Armorica">Armorica.html" ;"title="n Armorica">n Armorica. Also in attendance were Leo, Bishop of Bourges, and Victurius of Le Mans,
and three others.
Council of Tours 567
The Breton bishops declined to attend, as
Bishop Eufronius claimed authority over the Breton church. Among those who did attend was Chaletricus of Chartres.
[Goyau, Georges. "Diocese of Chartres." The Catholic Encyclopedia]
Vol. 3. New York: Robert Appleton Company, 1908. 21 February 2023
At the Second, it was decreed that the sanctuary gates were to remain open so that the faithful might at any time go before the altar for prayer (canon IV); a married bishop should treat his wife as a sister (canon XII). No priest or monk was to share his bed with someone else; and monks were not to have single or double cells, but were to have a common dormitory in which two or three were to take turns in staying awake and reading to the rest (canon XIV). If a monk married or had familiarity with a woman, he was to be excommunicated from the church until he returned penitent to the monastery enclosure and thereafter underwent a period of penance (canon XV). No woman was to be allowed to enter the monastery enclosure, and if anyone saw a woman enter and did not immediately expel her, he was to be excommunicated (canon XVI). Married priests, deacons and subdeacons should have their wives sleep together with the maidservants, while they themselves slept apart, and if anyone of them were found to be sleeping with his wife, he was to be excommunicated for a year and reduced to the lay state (canon XIX).
The council also noted that some Gallo-Roman customs of ancestor worship were still being observed. Canon XXII decreed that anyone known to be participating in these practices was barred from receiving communion and not allowed to enter a church.
The bishops of the Kingdom of Paris were particularly concerned about the
Merovingian
The Merovingian dynasty () was the ruling family of the Franks from around the middle of the 5th century until Pepin the Short in 751. They first appear as "Kings of the Franks" in the Roman army of northern Gaul. By 509 they had united all the ...
practice of seizing ecclesiastical properties in outlying areas in order to fund their internecine wars.
The Council noted that "every day is a festival" between Christmas Day on December 25 and Epiphany on January 6. This may be the earliest acknowledgement of what came to be known as the
twelve days of Christmas, or Christmastide">Twelve Days of Christmas">twelve days of Christmas, or Christmastide.
Council of Tours 813
A Council of Tours in 813 decided that priests should preach sermons in ''rusticam romanam linguam'' (rustic Romance languages">romance language
The Romance languages, also known as the Latin or Neo-Latin languages, are the languages that are Language family, directly descended from Vulgar Latin. They are the only extant subgroup of the Italic languages, Italic branch of the Indo-E ...
) or ''Theodiscam'' (German), a mention of Vulgar Latin understood by the people, as distinct from the classical Latin that the common people could no longer understand. This was the first official recognition of an early French language distinct from Latin.
. It was presided over by the papal legate Hildebrand, later
.
wrote a profession of faith wherein he confessed that after consecration the bread and wine were truly the body and blood of Christ.
Those men who marry their kinswomen, or those women who keep an unchaste correspondence with their kinsman, and refuse to leave them, or to do penance, shall be excluded from the community of the faithful, and turned out of the church (canon IX).
. The Pope deferred at the time due to the many like requests he had received. At the council,
, another Archbishop of Canterbury who had had difficulties with a king, be canonized. Although Alexander authorized Becket to hold a provincial council on the matter, upon his return to England, Becket seems not to have pursued the matter. Among the decrees were those addressing
, the sale of churches and ecclesiastical goods to laymen, and heretical sects spreading over southern France from Toulouse. Canon IV forbid any priest to accept any gratuity for administering Last Rites or presiding at a burial.